Arctic Cooling ATI Silencer 1 Review: Retro Chilling

Today we take a look at Artic Cooling?s golden oldie, one of their products which put them on the VGA cooler map, the ATI Silencer 1. In the glory days of the ATI Radeon 9700/9800 the Silencer was a necessary ingredient to have a cool and silent VGA card. Now that time has passed on one would think that the Silencer 1 has no target audience anymore. You could not be more wrong.

Intro & Specs

Introduction

Arctic-Cooling has been around for quite some time now and gaining more recognition world wide. The reason why AC is having success with their products is because they are geared towards silence and performance, while keeping the price very competitive.

Today I take a look at their golden oldie, one of their products which put them on the VGA cooler map, the ATI Silencer 1. In the glory days of the ATI Radeon 9700/9800 the Silencer was a necessary ingredient to have a cool and silent VGA card. Now that time has passed on one would think that the Silencer 1 has no target audience anymore. You could not be more wrong.

According to the constantly updated user survey at Valve the most used video card is in fact an ATI Radeon 9800, and even the 9700/9500 are well represented. The stock cooling of those cards will most likely now be clogged with dust and the small fans are rattling and making you wish for silence. At last this is the case with my Hercules ATI Radeon 9700 Pro. Let’s see if the Silencer 1 can help me out.

Specifications

AC comments about the Silencer 1

[M] comments

Extremely quietA large fan and optimized fanblades offer a minimum noise level at a high air flow.

The Silencer 1 fan is quite large, but does not cause any compatibility issues with higher southbridge heatsinks on the motherboard.

The copper makes the unit quite heavy, but its secured tightly, luckily

High Service Life (L10 at 30°C: 274000h)Our ARCTIC Ceramic Bearing (alloy bearing and Ceramic shaft) provides our fans with an outstanding service life.6 Years Warranty

Six years warranty on an aftermarket cooling device is quite unheard of, and it boosts the value of the product

DHES (Direct Heat Exhaust System)The DHES draws cool air from inside the case and exhausts warm air outwards. This prevents the fan from recycling warm air to cool the GPU, which increases cooling performance. Further the DHES lowers the air temperature inside the case, because the heat of the GPU will be carried out directly.

An effective system if implemented correctly

The ATI Silencer 1 I received for review a while back is revision 1, in the meanwhile they have released a revision 2 which increases the product’s compatibility with newer cards, here’s the full list: